Posts Tagged: Larry Yee

Retired county directors continue their life's work

Two retired UC Cooperative Extension county directors were recognized in the media as they continue work to build better communities.

The Santa Cruz Sentinel noted that retired Ventura County Director Larry Yee nominated Swanton Berry farmer Jim Cochran for the Natural Resources Defense Council 2011 Food Producer award. Cochran won the national honor, which comes with a $10,000 prize.

The article said Cochran and Yee are working together to develop Food Commons, a project that aims create a more localized infrastructure for food production and distribution. Among its goals are to create land trusts, community banks and hubs.

The Contra Costa Times reported that retired Sacramento County UCCE director Gloria Barrett has completed a book, titled "Seduction of the Church."

The book aims to show readers how to be alerted to the danger and subtlety of seducing spirits and helps believers maintain their focus on Jesus for effective ministry.

"All believers are in a spiritual war. The spiritual weapons of the enemy are subtle and strategically employed to hinder effective ministry," Barrett was quoted.

She is pastor of the Antioch African Methodist Episcopal Church, which she founded in 2001.

 

LA task force seeks good food for all

The irony of obesity and malnutrition in a community with access to an abundance of fresh fruit and vegetables has been carefully reviewed by a group of Los Angeles leaders, reported the Los Angeles Times this week.

The task force, established by Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, released a report with 50 recommendations to curb the problem, such as creating a regional food hub, making food stamps legal tender at all farmers markets and encouraging city and county institutions to buy more local food.

Paying for the food reform they recommend will be daunting. The task force suggested "leveraging existing resources, increasing participation in existing programs, and identifying outside funding mechanisms."

Director emeritus of UC Cooperative Extension in Ventura County, Larry Yee, is a member of the task force and was also named to the LA Food Policy Council, a more permanent follow-up to the task force.

"The pendulum has swung so far out of balance, to this overly globalized, over-industrialized, over-centralized food system," Yee told Times reporter Mary McVean. "Somehow we have to swing this pendulum back so we are more in control of our food."

The task force report, "The Good Food for All Agenda," was unveiled Wednesday night at the former downtown LA cathedral Vibiana. Attendees ate well at the event, enjoying food prepared by local culinary stars with local agricultural products, McVean reported in The Daily Dish, an LA Times food blog. The menu included grilled octopus, duck tartare, box-roasted pork, tomato tarts and raspberry compote.

The LA task force report on local food issues.

Retired director says Faulkner Farm is fulfilling mission

In a strongly worded op-ed published yesterday in the Ventura County Star, the retired director of UC Cooperative Extension in Ventura County, Larry Yee, said the historic Faulkner Farm continues to fulfill the mission of the Hansen Trust and should not be sold.

The op-ed came in response to a recent decision by the trust's advisory board to recommend that UC sell the farm.

Beginning in 1989, Yee worked personally with then 90-year-old Ms. Thelma Hansen, who was interested in applying her family's sizable fortune to sustain local agriculture. When she passed away in 1993, she left almost all of the family estate -- nearly $12 million -- to UC to create the Hansen Trust to benefit and sustain local agriculture through research and education.

Yee wrote in his op-ed that he had many conversations with Ms. Hansen from 1990 to 1993, when he was overseeing her care.

"She made it abundantly and unequivocally clear that she desired a center for agricultural research and education be created and developed with her gift," Yee said.

And, he said, in consultation with University attorneys, the trust advisory board saw no need to change the language of Ms. Hansen's 1990 trust document because it covered such a facility.

Over the years, Yee said, the Hansen Agricultural Center at Faulkner Farm has developed into a respected county treasure, recognized throughout the state and country for its work with research and educational programs that well served agriculture in Ventura County.

"It is my hope that the UC administrators and the UC Board of Regents will categorically reject this shortsighted and irresponsible request to sell the Faulkner Farm and dismantle the Hansen Agricultural Center," the op-ed says.

Water conservation study using landscape plants at the Faulkner Farm.

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